Nov
15
Lecture in Groningen
Ill.: La Nature 27 December 1890
Yesterday I gave a lecture at Groningen University on “Media Histories / Media Dispositifs: The Case of 3-D Technology”. I was invited by the group “Arts, Media, Moving Images” at the Research Centre for Arts in Society. My argument went as follows: rather than adhering to the linear history that we encounter in numerous accounts and which basically draws a more or less straight line from Charles Wheatstone’s stereoscope of 1838 to today’s 3-D cinema and beyond that to Virtual Reality headsets, it is much more productive to look at how the various dispositifs actually worked, how they addressed their audiences, how they functioned and what kind of effect they aimed at producing. Stereoscopy participated in a number of cultural series, and this is something which becomes virtually invisible when we think in terms of a linear history.